This naturally gluten-free take on cornbread tamale pie is just the dinner for the first cooler nights of early fall, while ripe tomatoes and corn are still in full swing.

It's cornbread season. I bet you didn't think cornbread had a season, but I believe it does. Cornbread season is when end-of summer corn is still sweet and abundant, even though it's gotten cool enough to want to bake those corn kernels into the sweetest, most delicious kind of cornbread. Cornbread season is right now. Get ready to be a believer.

But cornbread alone does not a full dinner make. So right now I'm using the end-of-summer tomatoes that keep piling up on my counter, along with more of that sweet corn, some jalapeños, ground meat, and cheese to build a hearty filling that I can cover with cornbread and then bake. It's my version of a tamale pie, and it is indeed a full dinner—one that I've found yields big smiles and full bellies all around.

I'd actually never made a tamale pie until recently, when my first cornbread cravings of the season hit and I was looking for a way to turn it into dinner. Then I became fixated on making the best new gluten-free version I could. This back-to-school time of year has me thinking about family-friendly casseroles. And for some reason I've also been thinking a lot about the American Southwest. (I've never been—I want to plan a trip!). So I made a bunch of versions of tamale pie until I had my own perfect hybrid—a little fresher and a little punchier than the classic, and totally gluten-free, too. Here's how I made it mine:

Add Fresh Chorizo to The Ground Beef

You mix a little pork into your beef meatballs, right? Same logic here—it adds extra fat and flavor and juiciness. For my tamale pie, I went for spicy fresh chorizo sausage instead of plain ground pork. But if you're feeding picky eaters who might not like it, or if you don't eat pork, you can stick with all ground beef for your casserole, or even use ground turkey.

Bake it In the Skillet You Make it In

Since you have to fry up the meat in a skillet to make the casserole base, don't bother pulling out a separate casserole dish to bake your tamale pie—you'll just waste time doing more dishes. Bake it in the skillet you cook the filling in—preferably a cast-iron skillet if you have one. Just be sure to pop your skillet on a rimmed baking sheet before putting it in the oven in case any drippage occurs as the pie gets all excited and bubbling in that hot oven.

Here my ground beef and chorizo mixture is all ready to go and I'm getting ready to stir in the corn and tomatoes.

Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell

Use Fresh Raw Tomatoes, Corn, and Jalapeños

Most classic tamale pie recipes are made with canned diced tomatoes and canned beans and frozen or canned corn. Since it's still tomato, corn, and pepper season, I chose the fresh stuff instead—and it gives the whole casserole a lighter fresher flavor. I also decided after several attempts at getting them in there to skip the beans entirely, because they just weighed the whole dish down too much and made it feel more old-school and filling than I wanted it to be (and thanks to all that cornbread, the dish is plenty filling without the beans).

And Add Some of That Corn to The Cornbread Too

Tamale pie is named after the tamale-like masa mixture that it's sometimes topped with. It's sometimes also made with masa on the top and the bottom, more like a real pie. But more often than not you see it topped with cornbread batter—no tamale masa in sight. At the end of the day it's an all-American casserole, with slightly ambiguous ties to the American Southwest.

Anyway, I make mine topped with cornbread—in fact my love of cornbread is the whole reason to make a tamale pie. Cornbread is the best kind of bread to make when you're gluten-free, because you can make it with no other grain or starch other than cornmeal. I like to add lots of fresh sweet corn kernels to mine for sweetness and texture. And when corn is this sweet and fresh, you don't even need to put sugar in your cornbread.

Serve it Hot, With Sour Cream

Tamale pie does not make the best leftovers—so serve it hot to a hungry crowd. Dollops of cold sour cream all around make it even better, and of course a green salad on the side never hurts—but remember, it's cornbread season, so you might as well just live it up tonight.